Ayatsuri Sakon: Over/Under at 7½

Ayatsuri Sakon follows the crime-fighting adventures of Sakon, a bunraku puppeteer, and Ukon, Sakon’s wise-cracking puppet. Think of them as the Japanese Mr. Garrison and Mr. Hat.

When Sakon’s deductive powers combine with Ukon’s moxy, the two have an uncanny knack for solving murder mysteries once half the suspects are already dead. How do they get access to murder scenes? Sometimes they just happen to be loafing around when a murder takes place right under their noses. Other times the bumbling detective at the scene is Kaoruko, Sakon’s mildly attractive aunt of marriageable age.

I saw the first episode because hey, I like mystery shows. But it just didn’t seem all that interesting. Now that I can’t find anything more in the genre besides waiting for crappy filler episodes of Detective Conan, I might give it another shot. It’s still collecting dust on a hard drive somewhere.

@Qwerty: There’s a great reason he has a puppet: he’s a puppeteer. Other ways the puppetry contributes to the story: puppetry is the art of mind reading (or something like that), which helps him get into the minds of the killers; also, Sakon comes off as a bit timid, so the puppet is a tool for expressing himself.

I watched like the first arc, then like most other arc-styled mystery anime, simply forgot to continue watching the next arcs.

Was rather creepy that the puppet had all the personality while the puppeteer had none though. I wouldn’t have minded as much except it was always the puppet’s expression that kept changing not the human’s…

@LJ: I see we have another fan of The Melancholy Brain. It was part of the same episode as The Megalomaniacal Adventures Of Brainie The Poo, which unfortunately I can only find in bits and pieces on YouTube.

@issa-sa: If I were one of those “deep” bloggers, you’d have a thousand-word analysis of who the real puppet is. Is it not Ukon that actually controls Sakon?!?! But that’s a load of bullshit you’ll never hear from me.

Shit, this is pretty obscure. I watched this last year during my “watch anything even if it’s crap phase” (a time I’m not really willing to revert to, and not to say this show is bad necessarily). My then-roommate and I made an inside joke out of the scene where the psycho bitch from the first mystery is stalking the other woman and calls out to her, saying “Let’s talk…”

I’ve started watching this about a year ago. I’m currently still on episode 11, I believe. It’s not a very entertaining series; Sakon also creeps me out because he needs a puppet to speak his mind. I believe this is like the lesser Mononoke. Episodes 8-10 weren’t difficult. I figured it out by episode nine. I just had to pay attention enough, because it at least makes the watching a lot more bearable.

It’s a good show, but I don’t like it very much. Watch Mononoke if you haven’t, though.

@Merk: What a coincidence, I picked this up because I was in a “watch anything even if it’s crap phase” as well (thanks K-ON).

@Michael: You can’t point conclusively to the killer until the match incident. There are intuition and process-of-elimination type hints earlier, but those are based off scenes unique to the viewer, not hard evidence available to Sakon & Ukon.

@Blowfish: Suck it up, it was the same for me. While you’re waiting, you could always watch Queen’s Blade….

I would agree, though. The earlier mysteries were hard. The first had the advantage of stereotypical misdirection, because most of us assumed that police are on the right side of the law (not condoning murders and such). The second was just hard (not like the first one), because it relied on swift yet deliberate actions, and topical misdirection. The lady had to think on her feet and pull off murders, and it was smart.

P.S. Where is my Opal Mehta book? I have been waiting. My birthday was February 23. I thought it would have arrived by May. 😛

[…] by a mysterious wealthy benefactor. Her only friend a back-talking puppet with a mind of its own (but not the kind that solves murder mysteries). And the student council she joins comprises a bunch of stock characters whose varying talents and […]